Various mechanisms exist for network booting of a computing platform. Existing systems may use a pre-boot execution environment (PXE) boot to retrieve a boot image from a remote network drive. The boot image is typically stored in a standard format defined by the International Standard Organization (ISO), and will be herein referred to as an ISO boot image, ISO firmware image, or simply ISO image. Network booting allows the platform to boot from an image stored securely in a remote location, controlled by an IT organization or trusted third party. However, when the platform has no network connectivity, the host operating may not be able to boot if the boot target parameters require remote booting.
Local booting of an operating system from a hard disk drive can be problematic because the image may be open to malware, residing on storage that is accessible to the OS or application software.